Big agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers in the American Midwest are on a mission to lure Silicon Valley tech workers who have been caught up in a wave of hiring freezes and layoffs, executives told Reuters.
Mass layoffs at major tech firms have opened the talent pipeline for Illinois-based Deere & Co. -- the world's largest tractor maker - and rivals who are eager to add tech workers to their payrolls as they expand into autonomous tractors, mining trucks, and other smart farming technology.
With an abundance of job openings, the companies are offering remote work arrangements and opening new offices in major cities like Austin and Chicago, a potentially attractive draw for workers who don't want to move to smaller Midwestern cities, where many of the companies are based.
The executives said the newly available tech talent could inject much-needed expertise into farm equipment manufacturing, helping to transform the industry through the use of more artificial intelligence and automation.
Detroit automakers are also hiring tech workers to meet the growing software needs of vehicles, auto executives have said.
Historically, it has been difficult for construction and agriculture equipment manufacturers to compete with Silicon Valley compensation packages, Scott Wine, chief executive of CNH Industrial (CNHI.MI), an American-Italian machinery maker, said in an interview.
"They were sucking so much oxygen out of the air because of their significant budgets," Wine said. "Now, they're not hiring and they're firing - so it just means we're getting a much larger pool of potential candidates that we can call upon."
CNH hired more than 350 engineers last year, some of whom came from Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Wine said. CNH expects to spend more than $1.4 billion in research and development as the company scales precision agriculture offerings in 2023, he added.
The combine harvester producer has increased its focus on agriculture in recent years to meet farmers' equipment demand, stacking its tech workforce with highly skilled workers in automation and artificial intelligence.
Building more cutting-edge machinery, such as a driverless tillage tractor, appealed to 54-year-old Mukesh Agarwal who was recruited by CNH from Microsoft in July 2021, before the latest layoffs.
He now works mostly from his home office in Minnesota and leads a team of software engineers as vice president of precision software and cloud applications development.
"I didn't know much about the ag industry or what CNH did, Agarwal said, admitting that the cultural change was an adjustment during his transition to CNH. "But, I saw a tremendous opportunity to bring science and innovation together."
Deere's main rival, Irving, Texas-based Caterpillar Inc. (CAT.N), is also making a big push to recruit tech talent. New hires in machine learning, computer science, and software engineering were up 30% in 2022 from the previous year, Karl Weiss, chief technology officer at Caterpillar, said in an interview.
The manufacturer has invested in digital products to improve construction safety using artificial intelligence. It had roughly 500 open tech jobs in December 2022 and it is looking to fill roles with the outflow of laid-off tech workers, Weiss said.
"The layoffs in the tech community have not been lost on us. We're actively talking to those employees," he said.
To boost recruiting efforts, Caterpillar exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) - an annual technology trade show in Las Vegas - in-person for the first time last month. Deere was also there, trying to recruit new talent.
Attendees got to see first-hand how machinery giants are merging heavy metal with technology. In one demonstration, an excavator 1,600 miles (2,580 km) away at one of Caterpillar's Illinois plants was operated by someone using a remote operator station and joysticks.
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